The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye has described as normal, the expiration of over one million COVID-19 vaccines.
He however assured that expired vaccines will not be given out to the public.
His comments are a response to one of two queries captured in the Auditor General’s latest report on government’s COVID-19 expenditure.
He further gave some factors responsible for the expiration rate.
“It is normal to have 5 to 10% of the vaccines expire because when you go to a village and you have a package that contains 20 doses, and you open and only have 10 patients present, you cannot use the rest the following day.”
“Wastage is bound to happen, but there is a limit. The disposal is not as simple as it is. There is a technical way we do it, together with the FDA,” Dr. Kuma-Aboagye said in an interview with Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show.
The Auditor-General in its report on government’s COVID-19 expenditure between March 2020 to June 2022 also said that the Ghana Health Service spent over GH¢600,000 on the compilation of information on the treatment and isolation centres even though the Ministry of Health already had the data.
Reacting to the report, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service said “those are our facilities. We have 6000 facilities across the country. They are run by the District and the Regional directors. Apart from what the Ministry is collating, the Regional Director for management purposes also needs to look at it.”
“The level of detail May thus not be the same as what we have. We are doing our own for management purposes and treatment of cases. They may not be the same. So we can’t say they were duplicated.”
